This Cosmos Is Not Big Enough For The Both Of Us! - Sentinels: Wrath of the Cosmos Review!

Permission to Squeeeeeeeeeeee! I’m always excited when I get a new expansion or promo for Sentinels of the Multiverse! More heroes, villains and environments to expand my ever growing collection for my all-time No. 1 game. And it’s getting to the point now where I have to consider using a third box to store it all sleeved. I already have the base set and Rook/Infernal double set boxes full to the brim, but when Villains of the Multiverse is released later in 2015 I’m going to need to use it as a third box! In fact due to the cards being tight enough as it is, I might resort to a third box now! No other game I own has required this much storage space outside of Arkham Horror!

Sentinels has dealt with threats on Earth, nearby planets and throughout time, but now we’re venturing further into space with Wrath of the Cosmos with another 2 heroes, 4 villains and 2 environments to play with (exactly like Shattered Timelines). With so much to compare against, how does this expansion hold up? I better break out the boxes……….yaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy!!!

Designer: Badell, Bender & Rebottaro

Publisher: Greater Than Games

# of Players: 1-5

Ages: 13+

Play Time: 60 Minutes

BGG Rank/Rating: n/a / 8.68

Beware My Golden Cheese! Captain Cosmic’s Light!!

Let’s start with the heroes and first we have Captain Cosmic who at first glance looks like the ultimate in cheesy heroes and you’d be pretty right to think so. His appearance and just the amusement of crying out your name during the game as you perform a heroic move is hilarious cheese all over. And within literally the first few seconds of looking at your starting hand, you’ll twig that this character is blatantly a parody of The Green Lantern of DC Comics fame – sadly a superhero character that I have yet to give much interest, not helped by the disappointing movie release in recent years.

However despite this, I’ve fallen in love with this hero in the game. As well as the usual great artwork across the board, the mechanics of this “Complexity 2” hero revolve around all of his golden constructs of which there are many different varieties to choose from. Each is susceptible to being destroyed with low hit point values, but they provide a broad range of useful buffs for any player that you place them with. This differs from the normal trend where buffs are generally across the board – here you have to pick and choose who will benefit most from a construct, making Captain Cosmic one of the best support characters I’ve used, capable of some insane combos.

We then get Sky-Scraper who you can tell is a parody of Ant Man just from looking at her three hero cards (fingers crossed the movie is good as the name and background is not winning me over so far despite being a Marvel fan). At “Complexity 3” this one takes a bit of getting used to. The general theme is that your cards will constantly switch you between tiny, normal and giant form, each granting different powers and having specific cards tied to them, though from experience I find myself in Large form more often than most.

On top of that, you have to deploy many cards with “Link” as a keyword on villains and heroes alike and then perform combos with them through other cards. It’s a fairly tricky process of card management coupled with being in the right form for the task in hand similar in a sense to the Naturalist from the Vengeance expansion, albeit harder to deduce which form is best for what in your first couple of plays. For those who enjoy a challenge, she’s a good hero to try out.

Hope…………I’ll Take That From Them First

First up we have Deadline and I can only think to describe him as a Greenpeace alien with Ultron’s twisted logic. He claims to have seen Earth’s extinction and believes that the only way to avoid it is to essentially . . . . . . . . kill off most of Earth. . . . . . . . . yeah it confuses me a bit as well. But essentially this guy is all about catastrophes and the environment deck. Slowly he builds up various disasters that hinder the heroes until eventually he flips over and effectively nukes a chunk out of the environment deck along with a ton of health from the heroes. He then builds back up before doing it all over again and assuming you don’t die from the damage, you lose if the environment deck runs out of cards. This is an interesting twist as now you’re having to pay special attention to the environment deck while dealing with all the on-going cards he brings out pretty quickly. Either keep those cards at bay or rush out the damage ASAP. I enjoyed my game against him and even though I won, I did suffer a casualty at the last minute so I think his difficulty 3 rating is justified. Easy to whip out for a game, but unique as well even if mostly a one trick pony.

Korgarath Warfang is one of the most unique villains I’ve seen to date and definitely worthy of her difficulty rating of 3, but also more fiddly to play through as there’s a lot to track. Instead of fighting the villain head on, you are fighting in an arena against various tough gladiator opponents while the villain simply sits by and watches. The win/lose condition is not to kill the villain, but rather to win the favour of the crowd much like Roman gladiatorial fights. To do this you have to dish out the damage, take out enemies and obtain “titles” which can attach to heroes as well as villains if you meet the conditions and then give out bonuses as a result (e.g. The Reckless, etc). Do too well however and Warfang gets annoyed and jumps into the fray as another combatant! This is a tough fight, but an amusing one as in our first game our Sky-Scraper player managed to nab 3 titles for herself, proving to be a crowd favourite, but a nightmare to say her full name from that point on!

Infinitor is probably the less interesting one of the group in terms of mechanics, in that he’s pretty straight forward in how he operates. Essentially he’s the opposite of Captain Cosmic who brings out manifestations of his own madness and dishes out a fair chunk of damage each turn. I got beat in my first game and then steamrolled him the next. He’s down as Difficulty 2, but I’d say 2.5! The right group of heroes can hand him a new one (Legacy, Cosmic & Expatriette for the win) and another group (Cosmic, Parse & Knyfe) can struggle. That’s typical with every hero I know but here you notice it more. You need to be able to tank the damage while whittling him down as fast as possible, hence why Legacy basically laughed in his face when combined with Captain Cosmic’s defensive constructs. Good if you fancy a quick game as he’s not very fiddly, but for me he probably won’t see much action.

Progeny is the new addition to the “hard-nuts” of the group, with a difficulty rating of 4 and looking like a cross between Apocalypse and the T-1000. From the start of creation, this bad boy requires some good teamwork to beat particularly in the deck manipulation department. Over time Progeny will keep bringing out various buffs that need to be kept in check. Having some damage dealt to you is fine, but allow him to get out his +2 damage boost and you’re in a world of hurt. He is also mean to the weak as his flip ability triggers when a hero reaches 10 HP or less and from that point he goes all Wreck-It-Ralph on his face till he finishes them off. He’s still one of the easier “4’s” in my opinion, so he makes a good introduction.

Wars And Strange Dimensions

First we have the Dok-Thorath Capital where there seems to be a huge war going on between two factions and you’re stuck right in the middle of it. Civilians will sometimes aid you providing you can keep them alive long enough and warring Minions and Thorathians will shoot everyone and everything given half the chance. The big game changer card is the Orbital Bombardment which deals a lot of damage across the entire table, hurting the heroes but sometimes giving us a nice edge in wiping away some cheap villains. It’s nothing particularly new or unique though.

The Enclaves are……………are……………well it’s hard to say because this is one of the most obscure and weird environments I’ve ever seen in this game and when we’re talking about comic book superheroes that’s saying something. The deck is full of these mad creatures with designs that look like they’ve been hijacked out of Dr Seuss and the Lovecraft mythos and then spliced together. It would give Jabba’s palace a run for its money. As a result there are a lot more targets for the heroes to start pummelling, but some of them actually prove beneficial such as a…….green…..yak….rhino thing (I’m not joking here) that acts as a temporary shield for the low HP characters, something of which proved to be very useful against Progeny in one game. However this adds a lot more to keep track of in terms of unique abilities triggering all over the place. It’s certainly not a favourite environment of mine, but it’s certainly one that gets a few laughs as each new creature comes into play just from the pictures alone.

Verdict

The more that Sentinels of the Multiverse expands, the more I love it. And this expansion is actually just enough to beat my previous favourite which was Shattered Timelines with some really interesting villains of which Kaargra Warfang takes the gold for her uniqueness and two very entertaining heroes, particularly in the case of Captain Cosmic who is worth the price alone for his deck that has proved so useful on many occasions.

The weak link of this expansion is the environments, but they’re not bad. The Capital is a standard affair among others without much that’s different and the Enclaves are just…………weird……….really weird. But environments are a small part of the game and it's in the heroes/villains where this expansion is at.

There’s nothing new mechanics wise (discounting Kaargra's unique villain deck) as opposed to Vengeance so there’s no extra complications to learn, it’s basically more of the same, but I’ll never grow tired of that for my No 1 game and whereas that might sound biased, this is a really solid expansion and you can probably pick this up along with Shattered Timelines for less than the Infernal Relics/Rook City double set if money is an issue.

You Will Like This Game If:

You want some unique and tough villains – these aren't pushovers.

You enjoy the base game and want a cheap way to expand the game.

You like Ant-Man and Green Lantern and want to play their parody versions.

You Will Not Like This Game If:

You’re satisfied with the base game.

You thought the opponents were hard enough already.

Environments are a big factor for you in your games – they’re subpar here.